


Day 18. Whale

by Munnin



Series: Fictober [18]
Category: Star Wars: Clone Wars (2003) - All Media Types, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Implied/Referenced Abuse, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, recovery from abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-18
Updated: 2018-10-18
Packaged: 2019-08-03 12:11:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,502
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16325996
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Munnin/pseuds/Munnin
Summary: Toshi explains himself to Fordo while Swan finds ways to cope.





	Day 18. Whale

Swan jumped into a hovercab. He just needed to put distance between himself and that bar.

Between himself and the past. 

He’d tried to put it behind him, tried not to think about it and move on. But memories were like Purrgil, massive star whales that could come out of nowhere and collide with you without warning.

But if Swan was being honest with himself, he shouldn’t have let it happen. He should have gotten more details before agreeing to meet. Maybe then he would have worked out it was Toshi and avoided the job entirely. 

All he’d seen was that one line in the jobs listing. _Singular, complete. 50/50. Direct. 3rd Contact. Face required. Good chit._

It was freelance speak – a one-and-done job that all parties walked away from, half payment up front deposited directly into an account of the slicer’s choosing. The job would be farmed through a 3rd party fixer so the principal and the contractor didn’t need to know who the other was. 

It was _Face required_ Swan usual balked at. It meant having to meet the fixer in person. And in general, that wasn’t something Swan liked to do.

But he’d needed the money.

His encryption programs were solid, some of the best in the galaxy. Unsliceable, even by the best of his competitors, which was why he could charge as much as he did. But the market for bespoke coding was very niche and with a war worsening, there was less and less safe work.

He’d almost been desperate enough to consider taking merc jobs again.

Well, he was cured of that now. The encounter with Toshi had jolted him back to his senses. 

The worst part was Toshi must have written the ad knowing it was the sort of thing Swan would jump at, intentionally luring Swan out. Swan had been careful to burn of his old contact lines after… after that. Making sure they couldn’t find him. 

He had fallen for a well baited hook. Now all he wanted to do was hide.

Speaking of which, he needed to somewhere to hide…

Swan jumped out of the hovercab, running a fake cred-chip over the reader. Not only would it clear the fare, it would also delete all data of the journey, leaving the automated cab a little lost but none the wiser. Swan had become more paranoid over the last few years. 

Buying the best bottle of Chandrilan brandy he could afford from a hole-in-the-wall intoxicant seller, he set about finding somewhere to stay. 

Even if it was just for the night. Just for long enough to get good and drunk and feel sorry for himself, it would be enough. 

He couldn’t afford a hotel, any more than he could afford the Chandrilan brandy. 

There were ways to make money on a busy world like Coruscant but skimmed credit chips in a crowd was risky with so much surveillance. And if he had any hope of this job panning out, he needed to stay on the right side of the Republic. For now. 

Instead he pulled up the holonet and checked the slicer boards. A few minutes later he’d traded a security bypass for a popular brand of speeder for the access code to an apartment a level down.

It wasn’t much of an apartment but it had a clean bed and a proper water fresher. The water was charged by the unit but no slicer worth their code couldn’t work around that. 

For now, Swan planned to get good and drunk, soak in a bath till the smell of that bar was gone. And probably cry himself to sleep. 

***

Back at 79’s, Frodo looked from the retreating slicer and down to the contact-card on the table. Then at the hapless Nikto fixer. “Still think he’s right one for the job?”

“I know he is. He’s the only one who can do it.” Toshi waved to the barman for a double, downing the cup of cheap likstro rum in one gulp. Coughing, he added, “But I warned you I was the wrong person to arrange it.”

“When you said you had history-”

“I meant it.” Toshi sighed and pressed to cool of the cup to his forehead. “I shouldn’t have grabbed him like that. It was stupid of me.” 

“He didn’t seem impressed.” 

“He had every right to be angry.” Toshi waved for another, lingering on this one. “I know you’re dying to ask.”

Fordo snorted. “It could be helpful to know. In case the intel impacts our deal with him.” Which was not the same as asking. Better for to Toshi volunteer the information. 

“I flew with a merc crew a while back. Nothing big or bad. Mostly just light smuggling and the odd theft to order.” Toshi knew he shouldn’t be admitting to criminal activity, but honestly, he was past caring. “We farmed slicing work out to Swan from time to time. When we needed something special. This one job, a simple data retrieval, an in and out job. But what we took turned out to be hotter than we thought. The whole job went sideways fast and Swan got caught up in it.” 

He looked down into the cup of near-enough-to paint stripper, as if he could see the past in its fumes. “Turned out the captain had his own agenda. He’d gotten Swan involved intentionally. When push came to shove, Atar wasn’t good at taking no for an answer.” He finished the rest of the drink and coughed again. 

Putting the glass down with exaggerated care as the bar started bluring at the edges, Toshi looked up at Fordo. “He’ll do the job. But on his terms. They’ll seem weird and fussy, but he’s a pro. No-one in the galaxy slices like Swan Le. Because there’s no-one in the galaxy who thinks the way he does. That’s why he’s the best.”

And with that, he staggered towards the door. 

***

Swan Le freely acknowledged he had three skills. Okay, not entirely true. Swan had many skills, but he had three that were saleable. 

Coding, slicing, and composing music.

It amazed Swan that people couldn’t see the connection between the former two and the latter. 

Music was mathematics. The timing between notes, the distance between those notes on a scale. What jarred or harmonised all came back to numbers. 

Sometimes deeply complicated equations, yes. But numbers all the same. 

But other people couldn’t see that. 

He worked as a slicer more than a musician because it paid better. But he couldn’t do one without the other. They were parts of the same skill. At least in his head.

 _Playing_ music, in front of other people was a different skillset again. It was more complicated and required reading people in a way Swan knew he wasn’t very good at. Picking tunes to suit the mood of the crowd; changing range and register to suit the hearing of the sentients listening; setting a volume loud enough to be heard and noticed but not so loud it became irritating. These were variables that were harder to pin down with numbers. Like slicing on the fly, it took skill and sometimes luck. Something Swan had no desire to rely on. 

Which was why he preferred jobs where he could work on the problem quietly, and in his own time. 

Coding, slicing, and composition, Swan mused, were like masturbation. A solo affair, best done somewhere private and dark. He tended to stick to jobs where someone brought the problem to him, then went away and left him alone till he was done. 

Which was the mistake he’d made getting involved with Toshi’s crew. With Atar. It had seemed so simple to begin with. A few small jobs. Enough to make him trust them, be willing to work with them again. 

And then…There’d been no walking away on _that_ job. No clean hand-off.

Atar had played by Swan’s rules at first, but little by little, he’d pulled Swan in, tangled him up in intrigue and danger till there was no getting out. Atar had made it so impossible for Swan to leave. He’d backed Swan into a corner so tight there was no way of saying no. 

Or so it felt at the time.

Till Atar got what he wanted, leaving Swan with nothing but shame. 

At least Atar had shown his hand, his true nature. Not even his own crew would follow him after that. 

Tears rolled down Swan’s cheeks, wracking sobs welling up till he choked on them. He curled up in the little bathtub and cried himself to a standstill. 

Towards the end of the bottle, when the water was almost room temperature again, Swan’s datapad pinged. 

Swan wiped his face and sighed, polishing off the bottle before opening the message.

The whale had passed and he was still alive. 

It was a contract request from the Republic trooper who had watched him in the bar, one Captain Fordo. 

Let the negotiations commence.

**Author's Note:**

> Best editor ever - Josh!


End file.
